Optimal Discounting

Abstract

The agent is modeled as a current self that optimally incurs a cognitive cost of empathizing with future selves. The model unifies well‐known experimental and empirical findings in intertemporal choice and enriches the multiple selves model with a notion of self‐control. The defining feature of the model is magnitude‐decreasing impatience: greater patience toward larger rewards. Two behavioral definitions of magnitude‐decreasing impatience are provided and the model is characterized under each of them.